The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was fired Friday weeks after the agency drafted a preliminary bomb-damage assessment – that was leaked to the media – suggesting that US strikes on Iran only set back the rogue nation’s nuclear program by a few months.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who had led the military intelligence agency since February 2024, “will no longer serve as DIA Director,” a senior Defense Official told The Post.
DIA Deputy Director Christine Bordine is now listed as acting director on the agency’s website.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly fired Kruse over a “a loss of confidence” in the lieutenant general, two congressional officials told the New York Times.
The DIA’s classified, “low confidence” estimation of the effectiveness of the June 21 airstrikes on Iran’s Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear facilities was leaked to CNN three days after American B-2 stealth bombers and cruise missiles bombarded the sites.
The document, which an official described as being based only on limited intelligence gathered the day after the strike, reportedly indicated the Iranian regime could bring its nuclear program back online as quickly as one to two months.
The preliminary assessment also suggested that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed by the airstrikes.
President Trump and several administration officials fumed over the leak.
Trump described it as “AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” in a Truth Social post.
“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!” the president maintained.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff charged that any suggestion the US did not achieve its military objectives in Iran is “completely preposterous,” in an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” at the time.
Witkoff went on to slam the leaking of the DIA assessment as “outrageous” and “treasonous,” and called for an investigation to find the person responsible for it in order to hold them accountable.
Kruse’s firing is the latest intel community shake-up by the Trump administration.
Former National Security Agency Director Timothy Haugh was fired in April, on the same day at least three White House National Security Council staffers were also shown the door.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Kruse’s firing “underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country.”
“General Kruse is a career military officer with decades of distinguished, non-partisan service to our nation, making this ouster all the more troubling,” Warner said in a statement.
The senator linked Kruse’s removal to the leaked DIA assessment that he said “directly contradicted the president’s claim to have ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear program.”
“That kind of honest, fact-based analysis is exactly what we should want from our intelligence agencies, regardless of whether it flatters the White House narrative,” Warner added. “When expertise is cast aside and intelligence is distorted or silenced, our adversaries gain the upper hand and America is left less safe.”
